Searching for / promoting tournaments / championships [Update: suggestion launched]

[Rukus McUallas]

Heya!

It's relatively easy to fill tournaments for games like Azul or Terraforming Mars, but for other games it's quite hard to find enough players.

I'd like to able to search for championships and hosts and have a "my tournaments" section in every profile. This would make it easier to promote tournaments. What do you guys think? Any other ideas?

Cheers!

[Rukus McUallas]

I've opened a "suggestion" in the report system. Please check it out and vote it up! If you want to support elements or even argue against some, please comment! It should help tournaments in general.

#216347: Improving tournament and championship visibility and reach

https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=216347

I've also started a bug report for the related search engine issue. It would be great and helpful, if you'd upvote this one as well.

#215254: Search does not find players or groups

https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=215254

[Meeplelowda]

While you are holding your breath for those suggestions to be implemented, I've had some success hosting tournaments for unpopular games by looking for tournaments with similar settings and directly inviting people who played those.

In your Suggestion 216347 you mention not being able to invite players with Elo < 100. You used to be able to do this before the recent tournaments revamp. There is still a way to do it, but it requires jumping through some hoops. First set up the tournament as private. Then copy the invite link that is generated and save it somewhere. Then switch the tournament to public. The invite link will still work for players with Elo < 100.

[mrdoctor]

Surely for less popular games it's far simpler to just use the existing function of going to https://boardgamearena.com/tournamentlist and selecting "games I know" or filtering by a specific game, and then seeing all the upcoming tournaments for those less popular games you already play?

[Rukus McUallas]

Surely for less popular games it's far simpler to just use the existing function of going to https://boardgamearena.com/tournamentlist and selecting "games I know" or filtering by a specific game, and then seeing all the upcoming tournaments for those less popular games you already play?

It's one thing to actively search for tournaments, but a different story to fill them as a host. And if there's almost never a tournament for a game, one might also just not look for them anymore.

[mrdoctor]

Surely for less popular games it's far simpler to just use the existing function of going to https://boardgamearena.com/tournamentlist and selecting "games I know" or filtering by a specific game, and then seeing all the upcoming tournaments for those less popular games you already play?

It's one thing to actively search for tournaments, but a different story to fill them as a host. And if there's almost never a tournament for a game, one might also just not look for them anymore.

But your suggestion was "I'd like to able to search for championships and hosts and have a "my tournaments" section in every profile". I honestly cannot understand how this is an improvement on going to that centralised tournament page and just filtering by either a specific game or games I know. Why would I want to memorise the random usernames of lots of people who've previously hosted tournaments so I can remember to look at their profile, when I can just go that that tournaments page link and see every tournament for a specific game all in one place?

[Meeplelowda]

It's one thing to actively search for tournaments, but a different story to fill them as a host.

I get what you're saying, but you mixed two topics--searching and filling--and mrdoctor is addressing the first topic. I addressed the second because it seemed to be the greater of your concerns:

It's relatively easy to fill tournaments for games like Azul or Terraforming Mars, but for other games it's quite hard to find enough players.

Yes, searching is related to filling, because searching is one way for players to find a tournament and join (fill) it. But that's not a tool for the host to find players. Or at least it's not optimized as a tool for a host. As I said above, I search for similar tournaments in the process of trying to fill my tournaments.

[mrdoctor]

I addressed the second because it seemed to be the greater of your concerns:

It's relatively easy to fill tournaments for games like Azul or Terraforming Mars, but for other games it's quite hard to find enough players.

Honestly, the simplest way would literally be to just add a 'tournaments' button to the top of the site where it already says "Play now / News / Games / Community / Forums". It would probably immediately attract 2-5x the amount of people looking to sign up to tournaments.

[Rukus McUallas]

Honestly, the simplest way would literally be to just add a 'tournaments' button to the top of the site where it already says "Play now / News / Games / Community / Forums". It would probably immediately attract 2-5x the amount of people looking to sign up to tournaments.

Very good point!

[Rukus McUallas]

Surely for less popular games it's far simpler to just use the existing function of going to https://boardgamearena.com/tournamentlist and selecting "games I know" or filtering by a specific game, and then seeing all the upcoming tournaments for those less popular games you already play?

It's one thing to actively search for tournaments, but a different story to fill them as a host. And if there's almost never a tournament for a game, one might also just not look for them anymore.

But your suggestion was "I'd like to able to search for championships and hosts and have a "my tournaments" section in every profile". I honestly cannot understand how this is an improvement on going to that centralised tournament page and just filtering by either a specific game or games I know. Why would I want to memorise the random usernames of lots of people who've previously hosted tournaments so I can remember to look at their profile, when I can just go that that tournaments page link and see every tournament for a specific game all in one place?

It's not an immediate thing and it's about communication. You can tell people/friends to check out your "insert championship title here" tournaments. Whether via chat or in person. Or there's a publisher/streamer/designer/whatever hosting various tournaments for different games. It can be helpful from both perspectives.